Tonight the Pokémon Company International held a 30 minute press conference, dubbed the “Business Strategy Announcement,” discussing some upcoming projects in store for the Pokémon franchise.The entire conference was lead by the company’s CEO Tsunekazu Ishihara with multiple people from partner companies appearing on stage as well.
The first announcement of the night came from discussing the recently released movie Detective Pikachu. TOHO’s managing director Hiro Matsuoka came on stage to discuss the film’s success, even comparing it’s success to the Godzilla franchise. Matsuoka would also announce that he will be joining The Pokémon Company’s Board of Directors as an external member. Ishihara would then discuss the 3DS game that the movie is based on, and how it ended on a cliffhanger. He would go on to announce that the conclusion of the story would be coming to Nintendo Switch. However, no more information about that was mentioned.
The next big announcement came when NetEase Games’ Vice President and head of publishing Ethan Wang made his way onto the stage. Wang would announce that NetEase will bring Pokémon Quest to China. This will be the first official Pokémon game to ever release in the country. Dubbed Pokémon Quest China, this version of the game will “preserve the core experience of the global version,” but will add new features such as PvP and social systems. Wang would also announce that over 1.7 million people have already pre-registered for the game.
Next, Game Freak’s Junichi Masuda came on stage to announce Pokémon Home which is coming to Nintendo Switch and mobile devices. Pokémon Home is a cloud based service that will be “a place for all Pokémon to gather.” The service will be an evolution of the 3DS service Pokémon Bank, which let players transfer their Pokémon across games on the 3DS, that lets players bring their Pokémon from Pokémon Bank, Pokémon Let’s Go, Pikachu! and Eevee!, the upcoming Pokémon Sword and Shield, and Pokémon GO all to a single place. The service will also update to be compatible with future releases in the series. Pokémon Home will also have trade functionality to where players can trade Pokémon locally and globally with only their smartphone. Pokémon Home is set to release in early 2020.
Following this, Ishihara announced another new project in development that will “turn sleep into entertainment” called Pokémon Sleep. Though not much is known about the game, Select Button, the developers behind the mobile title Magikarp Jump, are the ones developing the game. Nintendo’s Kazuhiro Maruyama would come on stage to debut the Pokémon GO Plus +, which is a new device that will be compatible with both Pokémon GO and Pokémon Sleep. The new device can work as a normal Pokémon GO Plus or as a sleep monitor to track your sleep for Pokémon Sleep, and will transfer results to users’ smartphones. Pokémon Sleep will release at some point in 2020.
Finally, the last major gaming announcement came in the form of revealing the recently announced mobile game in development from DeNa. The new game, titled Pokémon Masters, is set to bring the iconic trainers from across the series’ history in one game. They also showcased a very short gameplay trailer for the game. Though nothing else was divulged about the project, it is set to release by the end of the calendar year. However, Ishihara did state that more information would be coming next month.
Ishihara would end the press conference by stating each project will be touched on again individually in the future. Fans won’t have to wait long though for more Pokémon news though. A Nintendo Direct focusing on the upcoming Pokémon Sword and Shield will be happening next week on June 5 at 9 a.m. ET/ 6 a.m. PT.
You can check out the full Pokémon Press Conference below:
Watch Pokémon 2019 Press Conference from Pokemon on www.twitch.t